Friday, May 26, 2006

Ibrahim Nabavi's letter to a young friend

"...In your explanation [about this letter], you said that you had written to [President] Bush to present a solution to the problems in the world. What an excellent idea. But have you noticed that the problem in the world is you yourself? Do you know that it is you who are the cause of most of the bad luck and punishments now descending upon the free peoples and the countries of the world? [Do you know] that if there is a problem that must be solved, it is called Ahmadinejad?...[...]"In your letter to George Bush, you wrote: 'There are prisoners in Guantanamo who have not been tried; they have no access to attorneys, their family cannot visit them, they are being held outside their country, and there is no international supervision [of their treatment in prison].'

"My young friend!

"What business is this of yours? Such a statement should be made by the president of a country with no political prisoners, and whose prisoners have trials, and access to attorneys... If the Guantanamo prisoners don't have access to attorneys, at least in America attorneys aren't thrown into jail every other day. The president of a country that imprisons the likes of Abd Al-Fattah Sultani,(2) Shirin Ebadi,(3) Mehrangiz Kar,(4) and other attorneys has no right to criticize [prisoners'] lack of access to attorneys in the prisons of another country.

"Did Akbar Ganji(5) have the right to family visits [when he was in] Evin prison? At this very moment, isn't there in Evin a philosopher named Ramin Jahanbegloo(6) – who has no connection whatsoever to terrorism, violence, etc? Why are you pushing your nose into this matter?

"Is there international supervision in the prisons in Iran, for you to complain of the lack of the same at Guantanamo?..."